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The Effects of Negative Emotions to Your Health

Although we cannot control everything that is happening in our lives, we have significantly more inner power than we think. We need to be cautious of our repressed emotions, especially the negative ones, it can take away a lot of mental energy and eventually lead to health problems including high blood pressure, digestive disorder, chest pain, insomnia and the like.

Take some time to evaluate yourself and see what kind of baggage you are still carrying that cause burdens and prevent you from fulfilling and enjoying your present lives. These emotional baggages are hatred, anger, sadness, guilt, lethargy, suppression and the like.

According to researchers, stress, emotion and your personality traits have a great impact to your health, mentally and most of all physically. To name a few, depression increases the level of inflammatory-promoting proteins and abdominal fat, stress increases the risk of heart attack, sadness increase your pain receptors, suppressing your feelings can lower the immune system and many more.

It may sound ridiculous of how the negative emotions can affect your overall health since it is just merely an intellectual configuration. Let’s think it this way, have you noticed when you are feeling emotionally tense you experienced sweaty palms, constricted throat or stomach ache? Well, that is how our emotion is associated with the physical condition of the body.

As human we cannot escape the fact that we can feel variety of emotion every day. As a matter of fact, we are designed to experience all kinds of emotions but what makes it negative is when we got stuck to it for a very long time and this is when it will slowly damage our physiological and psychological health.

We need to discover more about how the mind-body connection works to help us better understand the way to overcome it. Some Eastern medicine has found ways to tone down this emotional tension through practicing yoga. Yoga help you increase your physical ability and skills and at the same time teach you to release the negative energy inside you through its poses and breathing. This particular alternative practice is not only well-appreciated in the Eastern countries but also in the Western countries because they believe it helps them enhance the mind-body connection efficiently and easily.

According to scientist Barbara Fredrickson, having positive emotions can greatly benefits your health in two ways: (1) they widen your perspective to the world; (2) they build up in the long run and create emotional flexibility. Dr. Fredrickson believed that positivity gives you better sleep, lesser colds, aids in faster recovery of cardiovascular stress and make you happier. Added to that, positivity such as feeling gratefulness, love, peacefulness, respect, lightheartedness and connection to your loved ones can directly influence your health condition and wellness. But first thing first, these are practices that need to be developed overtime and make it as a habit in the long run. Below are the few positive effects that can help you reverse the negative effects in your life and gives you better, prosperous life.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the state of accepting the negative situation that has happened in the past. The Stanford forgiveness Project has done a research regarding forgiveness to 260 adults in 6 weeks, and they found out that 70% of the people reported that they have overcome the feelings of hurt, 13% experienced lesser anger and 27% experienced lesser physical pain such as stomach ache, faintness and the like. Forgiveness is also associated with higher immune system, lower blood pressure, improve cardiovascular condition and longer the lifespan.

Gratefulness

Gratefulness is a simple practice of admitting all the good aspect in life whether it is big or small. Giving thanks with what you have and what you are can lead to better physical and emotional wellness. Count your blessing every day and see the positive changes that will happen in your life such as being happier and sleep better at nights.

Resiliency

According to Dr. Andrew Weil, resilience is like a rubber band; no matter how far you stretch it will always bounce back to its original state. Resilient people are like this. These people are able to bounce back from the negativity in their life although they have been stretched out by tough emotions like pain, sadness, frustration or grief. Resilient people do not avoid nor deny the suffering but maintain positivity throughout the tough times and eventually overcome them. As a result to this, they become better person because they allow challenges to teach them and make it as part of their personal growth.

Take full responsibility of the negative emotions that has happened in your lives and grow from it. Do not linger to it for long period of time because it will only destroy your overall well-being. Living a healthy lifestyle is not only a matter of eating healthy and exercise, but also exercises positivity in your lives.